You know that social media is important for your creative business but let’s be honest, social media takes TIME. I used to spend every Sunday evening planning out my content for the week ahead. I would set up my prompts for my facebook group and make sure that they would post at the same time each day. I would add other people's content to my queue in Buffer and rinse and repeat the next week. But you know what? I knew that there had to be something better. Something that would save me more time!

As a previous social media manager, I have tried lots of different tools for social media scheduling (Buffer, Post Planner, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, CoSchedule to name a few) but I wanted to find a tool that would allow me recycle posts so that they were always posting on their own to help me save time.

Okay so who needs a tool like this? I would say that anyone who wants to grow their social media should look for a tool like this because of this chart.

So from looking at this chart and seeing how long social media posts live, it only makes sense to me to repurpose them more often so that more people will see them. Especially on Twitter!!

One of the reasons why I love BoardBooster* is because of the looping feature. It loops my pins on my boards so they are constantly recycling while I can do other things that are more important to my business instead of hanging out on Pinterest all day... which is so easy to do!

The search begins....

I wanted to try out MeetEdgar but it doesn't have a free trial so I tried out Recurpost for about a few weeks. I’m a geek. I like software to be user friendly and have a pretty user interface (UI). Recurpost doesn’t have that. It's free and you get what you pay for. Does it work? Yes, but I wanted something more reliable and it just left me feeling like meh. Sometimes it would post things at the wrong time and it was hard to understand how to use. This is probably the best way to explain how I felt about Recurpost.

Luckily, one of the online courses that I bought a few weeks later came with a 30-day trial to MeetEdgar.

I was super lost when I started using MeetEdgar for the first time but once I got everything setup, I LOVED how I could add posts to different categories, schedule times to post and then Edgar would automagically (yes, that’s a thing) post to my selected accounts. This saved me SO much time!

I set up different categories for everything from Facebook group daily prompts, to using the RSS feed from my blog to random questions, quotes, affiliate links and etc.

After the 30 day trial was up though, the $79/month price tag kinda stung a bit. I get it, we can justify any purchase really, but for where my small business is right now, that price is a little too steep for me.

I started looking for other options, and about three weeks ago I heard about SmarterQueue. I submitted my email for an invitation to their 14-day trial and waited until I received signup info.

SmarterQueue is in beta-mode but will be launching later this month. The UI is very intuitive, they have a lot of helpful resources, customer service is super helpful and responsive.

2. Social Sharing

One of the biggest things that I didn’t like about MeetEdgar was the fact that I felt selfish. I am a firm believer in sharing other people's content on social media as well as my own and I couldn't find an easy way to do with with MeetEdgar.

As a solution for this, I created another category named "Other people's links" and I would then add other people’s content to that category. I'm not going to lie, searching for tweets, copying/pasting people’s content adding it into MeetEdgar took more time than I care to admit. It definitely made me miss Buffer's easy share tool!

When I found the 'Find Content' section on SmarterQueue I was thrilled. They have so many different ways to add content (even via twitter lists!) and I love that you can search within the platform too! No more copying/pasting!

Here’s a quick overview:

This is so much easier because I can choose what I want to share, click a few things to save to my category and that’s it!

3. Analytics

Okay so this is where I’m going to get a bit more geeky with you but hear me out, analytics can be so helpful when you know what you’re looking for. MeetEdgar would send me an email with some stats but I wasn’t able to look at analytics directly inside MeetEdgar. With SmarterQueue I have this whole 'Analytics' section to analyze and I love their Analyze a Twitter Account tool.

Here's a quick overview:

When I'm looking at analytics, I pay attention to where my audience is coming from, my most popular posts and ideal posting times.

The most important thing about analytics is to know what’s working for you, what's not and how to fix it. Tweet that!

Honestly, MeetEdgar is not a bad program at all. Their software works very well and customer service was über helpful when I reached out. I posted things on time and did save me a lot of time.

The reasons listed above are why I'm switching to SmarterQueue. SmarterQueue is exactly what I was looking for and I no longer have to spend Sundays setting up my content. The pricing is right, social sharing is easy and I have access to A LOT of analytics. I can set everything up in SmarterQueue and forget it until I want to tweak it.

Recap:

SmarterQueue starts at $19.99 / month (that will be fixed, however, what's included in that price will change).

SmarterQueue is now accepting direct signups for a set number of people each day, and are planning to release their launch prices later this month.

Hey there, I'm Lindsey the online educator behind hazelhaven.com. I help creative business owners learn how to use the tools to grow their audience online. I'm an introverted extrovert who loves tech systems, dark chocolate and a strong cup of coffee. Be sure to join my Facebook group, Creative Biz Haven.